As Languages Evolve...

naph writes "It seems that as programming languages have developed there has been a steady increase in the level of abstraction they use. Early languages were all very low-level, but successive generations have become higher and higher. Is this trend going to continue, or do you think we've reached a kind of happy medium between power and abstraction? Would developers prefer higher level languages, or is the direct control of things good? I was just wondering what other developers out there thought of this."

Comments

Tables are another approach

[Tablizer]

I tend to find the current movements too "code-centric". I find that one can factor (move) much of the complexity of an application into a relational database.

You can get virtual and ad-hoc views of your "noun model" without physically shuffling around code and code structures. Code is too physical, rigid, and one-dimensional for my tastes.

Note that I honed most of my database techniques on "nimble" desktop database systems of the 80's. The "big iron" DB's like Oracle can learn something from them to make their systems (optionally) more nimble IMO. Their formality has scared off a lot of people into the code-centric realm. I am not saying go back to those 80's systems, but simply look at what they did well and carry the lessons over to the big-iron DB's.